Laura Cantrell seems pretty wonderful. I have only heard one of her songs, "When the Roses Bloom Again," on the album of the same title. This song sounded too old not to be the real thing, and alas, in her words:
"I first heard this song sung by Sally Timms (of the Mekons) on her album Cowboy Sally's Twilight Laments. She played it live on a visit to the Radio Thrift Shop and I sat rapt, forgetting that I was supposed to be running the show while she sang. Sally explained that Billy Bragg and Wilco discovered the lyric in the Woody Guthrie archives [emphases mine] and Jeff Tweedy had written a beautiful melody for it. They subsequently realized that the lyric was probably a traditional song copyrighted by A.P. Carter of the Carter Family, and couldn't include it in the Mermaid Avenue project for which it was recorded (the Wilco version finally surfaced on the Chelsea Walls soundtrack). I learned the song to sing on a tour of the U.K. and recorded a solo version for my first Peel Session. I love the idea that an old song passes through so many hands and becomes new again (from "When the Roses Bloom Again Song by Song" at lauracantrell.com).
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